学进去

As a kid, I used to spend my summers with my grandparents on their farm in Texas. I helped them with farming at times. Luckily, they _________ a caravan, a kind of car designed for people to live in while travelling. Every few summers, we’d travel together around the US and Canada.

On one trip, I was about 10 years old. I was playing around in the back of the car _________ my grandfather was driving. My grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked through the trip, and I hated the _________, which made me cough a lot. I read about smoking in an article. It says that every puff (吸) of a cigarette takes two minutes off your life. I _________ the number of cigarettes per day and the puffs per cigarette. When I came up with a reasonable (合理的) number, I was _________. Then I moved my head into the front of the car and proudly _________, “So far, you’ve taken nine years off your life!” Hearing this, my grandmother began to cry and it was not what I _________. I did not know what to do. My grandfather, who had been driving _________, stopped the car, got out of it and opened my door. He looked at me calmly, and said _________, “See, grandmother is crying! One day, you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

As I grow up, I realize that cleverness is a gift and kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they are given __________. Choices can be hard, so it seems more difficult to be kind.